Book review: prison narratives by Akhtar Baloch

Abstract

Prison Narratives is a translation of a diary by Akhtar Baloch, an 18-year-old female Sindhi activist. Asad Abbasi finds the core of the book, which documents the period in 1970 when Baloch was imprisoned for leading a protest, to be insightful, imaginative and full of interesting characters, yet finds the contextualising additions to be deeply partisan. Nevertheless, he writes that the diary is an important and rare text for anyone interested in gender debates in Pakistan.